Cup of tea (with something roasted)
Probably gen-mai cha. Green tea with toasted and puffed rice.
Hey Tom.
Just want to let you know that it seems a " at the end of the link to Field Trip app that makes it go to a broken page. Otherwise, fantastic article. I highly enjoyed it and the writing was phenomenal.
The great BB has fixed it! Cheers for the heads up!
Everything about your meal sounds great, thank you for posting!
I spent seven years in Japan and some of my favorite places to eat were the nondescript ones like this. Thanks for the bittersweet reminder of those times.
Congrats to your kids on being such adventurous eaters!
Yes, I think that was it. Thanks!
Thanks so much! Iām really glad you enjoyed it. And thanks for pointing out the bad link; I had the code wrong in the original markdown. Whoops.
Our oldest will eat anything. Well, sheāll try anything. The youngest, not so much, so we were really surprised how much she liked this food. And what she didnāt eat was more for her parents.
Maybe also mugicha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roasted_barley_tea
The white fish definitely has a name in english, the problem is that identical fish types are called different things in different parts of the word, even between english-speaking countries.
Shiso is fucking delicious. At higher-end sushi shops in the west (and any sushi shop in Japan) they often serve sushi with it as a garnish (it has to be a sushi place run by Japanese though, Iāve never seen it in a non-Japanese sushi shop - tons of sushi shops are run by Koreans in Oz). The beauty of Japanese food is that all the decorative elements are usually edible and usually delicious (unlike parsley). If you see green leafy stuff on a sushi (or very frequently sashimi) plate then eat it and be amazed. Itās not going to be anything other than shiso.
Cooking chopsticks are an extremely useful cooking tool (especially for stir-frys) because you can both mix things and pick things up easily with one hand. You can get them at pretty much any asian grocer in the pots/pans/utensils section.
The reason the tempura oil is delicious is because it was likely sesame oil and, unlike deep fryers, the oil must be clean (i.e. they pour new oil every day) for tempura to work.
http://www.g-chef.com/english/articles/tempura.html
The little tray of snacky stuff (exclusing dipping sauce) is known as an OtÅshi (equivalent to an appetiser)
Finally you usually canāt make bookings for places like theseā¦ you just rock up and wait if thereās no seats, or keep walking and find the next delicious place.
But I didnāt expect to stumble upon one of the best restaurants Iāve ever eaten at
In the country with the most Michelin stars I think thatās probably one of the things Iād expect most 
Japan also has some of the best Italian and French food in the world.
Not pure sesame oil? It has a strong flavor, a little bit goes a long way.
From other reviews, it sounds like theyāre known for pressing their own sesame oil rather than use straight commercial oil, which is an amazing commitment to quality.
Iām not sure, but Iāve read pure sesame oilā¦ I cooked it at home once years ago and I donāt recall what we used but itās more like a shallow-fry type deal, rather than dunking them in a vat (and itās a very short cooking time per item)
Nungesserās suggestion would probably explain it too. The other thing is that such ingredients in western countries are often made in China, or based on Chinese product. In Japan they have the most obscene attention to quality and variety of product options.
All I know is, here in the states it comes in a little 6-oz bottle. It would take 49 bottles to fill a deep-fryer. When I cook asian, which is about once a month, I add about 1/2 teaspoon to flavor a whole meal.
Donāt quote me on this, but I think the difference is between refined sesame oil (the cheap stuff used for frying) and virgin/unrefined sesame oil (the kind used for drizzling on food, often from smoked sesame seeds). You can get big jugs of the refined stuff for pretty cheap, and itās typically filtered and re-used in restaurants.
Dude, you could be rightā¦ These two pages are from pretty reliable sources - NHK (Japanese tv) and Aichi Prefectureās local news site and they both say vegetable oil. Iāve read sesame oil and āfrying oilā (whatever that is) but these pages are reliable sources so like most things I guess thereās many ways to skin an ebi.
Dang. Too late. Sorry.
Maybe itās the mysterious kind they use at McDonalds?
Great information, thanks! I agree, shiso was fantastic. Iāve donāt think Iāve seen it before (or at least not knowing what it was), but Iāll keep an eye out for it now.
Later on we took a cooking class and part of the price of admission was a set of cooking chopsticks. Weāve been carrying them with us and using them whenever we cook now.
